In the valley where Wu Qi had chosen to lay down the Myriad Poisons Formation, Yu Gu was carefully mixing a crock of poison soup.
It was a common-looking black clay crock, about the size of a common crock. Beneath it was an ordinary stove made of three black rocks, and dozens of bones, cut straight, were burning feebly in it. The colorful liquid in the crock was boiling due to the weak flame, its surface filled with tiny bubbles. A pungent smell wafted through the air, making everyone who inhaled it want to vomit.
The smell was beyond description. It was as if someone had mixed rotten corpses, fishes, shrimps, and numerous nasty things in a toilet bowl that had not been cleaned in three thousand years; poured in a bag of baking powder; set them aside to ferment for three to five years, and then let it mold and rot for decades. Only then such a disgusting smell could be produced.
As soon as Wu Qi stepped into the valley and inhaled the smell, his body trembled, his vision darkened, and his stomach tumbled. In the next moment, he began to vomit. Although his chaotic energy could devour and digest almost anything, he instinctively refused to use it to digest this terrible smell. As a result, he was squatting beside the Yang Qiu brothers and vomiting together with them.
The mere smell was so dreadful that it was hard for Wu Qi to imagine what would happen if someone actually drank the colorful poison soup from the crock. He could see numerous runes flickering on the surface of the black clay crock, indicating that the smell of the poison soup had been masked by more than ninety percent. Even so, the slightest leakage of the smell was enough to make Wu Qi sick and vomit. This kind of poison soup was really unheard-of!
Wu Qi glanced at the crock in horror, then quickly exercised his cultivation base to calm his internal organs, cutting off his senses of smell and touch. Finally, he took a deep breath and managed to return to normal. There was no such brutal poison technique found in the Primordial Dao of Divinity that Princess Zhang Le inherited, and although the Scroll of Stealing recorded almost all the poisons that were found in the world, it did not provide any specify poison technique either. Other than the Drunken Dragon Incense and some drugs that could provide aid in stealing, it did not mention any other poison formula.
After experiencing the dreadful smell of Yu Gu's poison soup, it suddenly struck Wu Qi that he should learn something like this.
If he were able to make all the flying swords used by the disciples of the Underhand Sect poisonous, even if their cultivation bases were a little weak, they could still pose a threat to those mighty immortals. Wu Qi only hoped to improve his disciples' overall strength as fast as he could, and whether or not it was an honorable act to use poison against his enemies, he did not give a sh*t.
Waddling to Yu Gu's side, Wu Qi watched as he carefully fished a palm-sized, three-tailed red scorpion from under his sleeve and threw it into the crock. After stirring the soup with a jade stick for a while, he added more strange things into the soup, including a six-headed venomous snake, an iron-blue but half-transparent toad, a three-feet-long earthworm whose body was as thick as a man's wrist, a blood-sucking bat with a wingspan of ten feet, and a pale green turtle with three heads and three tails.
No one knew exactly how much space Yu Gu had in his sleeve, but from it, he had fished out more than three hundred different strange and poisonous creatures in a row. On the other hand, the crock was only about half a foot in diameter, but he was able to easily fill it with venomous creatures more than tens or even hundreds of feet in size. Obviously, it was a rare treasure as well.
As time went on, the color of the poison soup became more and more strange. Tiny bubbles rose and burst in the colorful liquid, and a strange odor was slowly drifting and spreading across the place. Wu Qi felt that there was a thick layer of mist blanketing his skin, giving him the illusion that he could not breathe.
At Wu Qi's current level of cultivation base, even if he did not eat, drink, or breathe, he could survive forever. Even so, he was nearly choked by the odor diffusing from the poison soup. This showed that its toxicity had reached an unimaginable degree.
After observing the crock of poison soup for a while, Wu Qi shook his head and whispered to Yu Gu a brief account of what had happened when he took the Yang Qiu brothers to investigate the pair of dragon pythons. When he heard Wu Qi say that they had captured the Sovereign's son alive, Yu Gu could not help but lift his head to look at Li Qinghua, who was being held by the four brothers.
Li Qinghua had also smelled the nauseating odor leaking out of the crock. As his cultivation base was sealed, the poor thing was unable to resist the powerful poisonous gas. When Wu Qi and the Yang Qiu brothers had stopped vomiting, he was still throwing up green bubbles. With all the bile in his stomach thrown up in the first round, only heaven knew what he was throwing up now. Judging by his greenish face, if he continued to vomit like this, perhaps he would really die of vomiting.
Yu Gu put a finger on Li Qinghua's head and knocked him out. "You little fellows did a good job," he praised. "This boy's better off alive than dead. You four are kissed by the lady luck this time! Hehe, which one of you is going to be conferred a rank of nobility? I still have a great-granddaughter who is very beautiful and not married. I think I can wed her to you!"
Wu Qi smiled faintly. 'This old fellow Yu Gu is such a good businessman. All he has to do is produce a great-granddaughter, and he can immediately draw a freshly-baked marquis to his side, who'll have a province as his fief. It's a real bargain to trade a great-granddaughter for so much!'
The Yang Qiu brothers looked at each other, and three of them pointed their fingers at Yangqiu Fengbo at the same time. Wearing an unsightly face, the eldest of the four was stealing glances from the corners of his eyes at the crock in front of Yu Gu from time to time; like him, his three younger brothers were doing the same.
The fact that Yu Gu was not a very good-looking old man, and that he mastered such a terrifying poison art, made the Yang Qiu brothers really uninterested in marrying his great-granddaughter. But, since he had made the offer on his own initiative, and with his status in front of King Yang Qiu, it was almost impossible for them to refuse!
Was he about to marry a wife who looked just like Yu Gu and hid in their bedchamber every day to concoct poisonous potions? Yangqiu Fengbo's face turned at the thought of his terrible future in marriage. But, there was no way he could refuse it, so he just stared at the three fingers pointing at him with tearless grief.
Wu Qi could not help chuckling to himself at the sight. He did not want to be bothered by their problems. Seeing Yu Gu start fishing out all sorts of weird things and putting them into the crock again, he quickly left them under the pretext of wanting to check the progress of the formation bases.
Fortunately, he had Yu Gu's help, an experienced expert in the field of poison. Otherwise, Wu Qi would not have been able to put the formation together. Although he had the diagram of the Myriad Poisons Formation, and the formation could indeed unleash a very terrible power, where was he going to find all those strange and poisonous creatures? If Yu Gu had not been practicing the art of poison since childhood and collected all sorts of weird things in his Supreme Tower, it was literally an impossible mission for Wu Qi to construct the formation.
In the heart of the valley, Wu Qi saw soldiers carefully planting formation discs, banners, and lethal weapons at different places. All these things were taken out of King Yang Qiu's warehouse in his field headquarter, and each one was of the best quality. It was Wu Qi's most extravagant formation in years. Even the most basic formation discs were made of the materials used to craft supreme-grade Heaven Immortal Artifacts. From this, it could be seen that an incredible amount of resources had been poured in to construct this formation.
Inside Yu Gu's Supreme Tower which was placed deep in the valley, skilled craftsmen sent by King Yang Qiu were constantly crafting formation discs, banners, and lethal weapons. All the instruments were made according to the diagrams provided by Wu Qi. Countless soldiers were streaming in and out of the Supreme Tower, bringing freshly-crafted instruments to different places in the valley.
Wu Qi inspected from one place to another; everything was going smoothly according to his design. He was delighted to see that the soldiers who were busy working were all trained elites, and their movements were all very strict and without the slightest error. If the Sovereign was killed, not only would Wu Qi and Princess Zhang Le be able to vent their resentment, but the enormous credit would be enough for him to reap almost infinite benefits. At the thought of it, he could not help but smile.
While Wu Qi was in his complacency, a voice of contempt suddenly came from the top of a mountain not far away from him, "It's wrong of you to arrange the formation in this way. Let me put you in the right way! Move these three formation discs thirty feet west so they can communicate with the formation discs in the distance!"
Wu Qi was struck dumb, and then a flash of anger surged from the bottom of his heart. Throughout the formation, this mountain was one of the main supports in the west, and all the instruments placed on it were made of rare materials used to make Gold Immortal Artifacts. If the positions of the formation discs or banners were arbitrarily changed, it was very likely to weaken the whole formation's power by at least ten percent.
Fuming, Wu Qi flew up into the sky and landed on the mountaintop. Not knowing exactly who was the person that made the remark, he started yelling, "Who's the stupid guy talking nonsense here? Who said to move the formation discs?"
More than a hundred soldiers were planting formation discs and banners on the mountaintop, and several Oracles were sketching magical runes and symbols on the ground. As soon as they saw Wu Qi, the military officer in charge of the whole formation, arriving, they stopped their work and bowed to him. However, there were a few young men and women in white, who looked as if they were on a leisurely picnic, held their heads high and looked disdainfully at him.
One of the young men pointed his finger at Wu Qi's face and said with a cold grin, "Tan Lang, you're just a simple man from the wilderness. Even if you're lucky enough to obtain the diagram of some formation, what do you know about the Dao of formations? Do you understand the essence of the formation? Do you know what the Yin and Yang, as well as the Five Elements are? What about the Two Forms and the Three Powers? You are such a stupid fellow! Do you think a formation that is laid out according to the diagram without any modification is a complete and perfect formation?"
Arrogantly, another young man pointed at Wu Qi and sneered, "If this formation is really arranged in your way, I'm sure those trapped inside will be able to escape easily! Of all Master Yu's disciples, I have the best attainments in the field of the formation. In order for His Excellency's grand plan to succeed, I'm kind enough to give your useless subordinates some guidance, as well as to teach you what it means to be..."
"F*ck you!" Wu Qi did not bother listening to the nonsense of Yu Qingcheng's disciples. He leaped over and threw the group of young men and women far away with a round of brutal beating, who, though articulate, had not even reached the realm of the First Pangu Heaven.
"Get the hell out of there! If you ever come here again and make trouble, even Yu Qingcheng won't be able to save you!" Wu Qi did not hesitate to break all the teeth of the two men who had spoken just now, making them fall all over the place.
After witnessing Wu Qi's savage approach, the group of men and women quickly helped their injured companions up and left in a panic. When they were hundreds of feet away, a young man turned around and growled while pointing at Wu Qi, "Tan Lang, you're the one who refused to listen to us. If you let His Excellency's target get away, you'll face a death sentence!"
Wu Qi's heart jerked. There seemed to be some other meaning hidden in these people's words.